What did Heraclitus have plenty of opportunity to do in the mountains?

To reflect on the natural world.

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What did Heraclitus observe whilst reflecting on the natural world in the mountains?

Nature is in a state of flux: "Cold things grow hot, the hot cools, the wet dries, the parched moistens".

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Heraclitus noted that everything is constantly doing what?

Shifting, changing and becoming something other to what it was before.

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Why is nature change?

Like a river, nature flows ever onwards. Even the nature of the flow changes.

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What did Heraclitus state about change?

"We both step and do not step in the same river. We are and are not".

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What does Heraclitus's quote about change mean?

We can't step into the same river twice. This is because the river is always changing. We step in and out of rivers as different beings.

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What three things are in a state of flux?

The river, the world and humans.

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Why are we flux?

We are growing and dying all the time, consuming light and resources to replicate our structure, while shedding matter continuously.

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What two things are ubiquitous features of the natural world?

Change and death.

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What did Heraclitus state about change and death being ubiquitous features of the natural world?

"Gods are immortal, humans immortal, living their death, dying their life".

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What was Plato's opposition to Heraclitus's views?

How would it be necessary to name anything if it changed constantly? Knowledge is the highest desire of the human soul. This knowledge is scientific and philosophical. It can only be true knowledge if it is the same for all time.

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What did Plato need to know about Heraclitus's views?

Whether his description of constantly changing physical Universe cannot be the description of what reality is.

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According to Plato, what is knowledge not dependent on?

The sensible reality of change but the realm of existence all together. This is the world of the Forms or the ideas which is eternal and immutable.